The invention relates to a device for the manufacture or processing of foodstuffs, in particular meat, having at least one perforated plate, through the holes of which the foodstuff is capable of being pressed, in conjunction with which a knife in a knife carrier with a cutting edge traveling along it is allocated to the perforated plate.
A device of this kind is already familiar under the designation of a grinder, for example. The perforated plate is present inside a housing, in conjunction with which, for example, a plurality of perforated plates can be connected one after the other, for example as depicted in DE 39 15 409 A1. Arranged ahead of each perforated plate is a rotating knife, which knives scrape across the perforated plate and/or an insert in the perforated plate with their blades and in so doing comminute the meat and press it through the holes in the perforated plate.
Perforated plates consisting of two parts have already existed for some time. For example, a perforated plate consisting of a carrier plate and a hardened steel plate inserted therein is described in U.S. Pat. No. 1,695,898. In JP 3,217,255 A, a ceramic plate is applied to a carrier plate. A ceramic material is also used here for the knife blade.
The manufacture of the perforated disk and/or the knife completely from a ceramic material, or the manufacture of the knife and the perforated disk from a metal and the coating of the surfaces of the perforated disk and/or the knife with a ceramic material, is previously disclosed in DE 28 21 930 C1.
A knife which consists in its entirety of a ceramic material is disclosed, for example, in JP 3217255 A. A knife of this kind is exceptionally expensive and delicate, however. It is very hard, and as such it is also sensitive to shocks. The high hardness must be achieved at the expense of the stability of the cutting edge, because the greater hardness is also associated with greater brittleness of the material.
A device of the above-mentioned kind is previously disclosed in DE 44 37 144 A1. The knife in this case consists of a blade insert and a blade. The blade is held in the blade insert, which is itself made of plastic. The blade insert itself is guided in a readily movable and readily tiltable fashion within an axial opening of a wing, in order to permit complete contact by the blades on the perforated disk under the effect of the operating pressure of the product to be cut up.